Tagged: finder

A few people have asked me whether you can make ForkLift 3 the default application for file management tasks. You can, but the behavior can be inconsistent between different Macs. Changing this setting will cause applications that have a Reveal in Finder or Open in Finder command to redirect those actions to ForkLift. Commands from applications like Alfred and LaunchBar that display results in a Finder window appear in ForkLift instead. This works for the most part but the behavior isn’t always consistent. Some applications don’t use the operating system default setting and they will continue to do their own...

Before macOS Sierra, Finder had no option to list folders and files separately1. I’m still using El Capitan because of other dependencies and viewing folders mixed in with files really grinds my gears. And I still can’t understand the logic behind using return to rename a file or folder instead of opening it. Fortunately, several third-party Finder replacements have emerged to fill these gaps. Finder alternatives either extend Finder’s native functionality (like XtraFinder and Total Finder) or run as stand-alone applications (like ForkLift and PathFinder). XtraFinder was a capable solution to my gripes for several years. When Apple introduced System...

The smallest things can sometimes cause the greatest friction. It’s a very close call as to which Finder “feature” is responsible for the most expletives since I switched to Mac about six months ago. The contenders are: using return to rename files instead of opening them; and alphabetical sorting which mixes folders together with files. I prefer the Windows approach of displaying folders ahead of any files. Thankfully, a recent discovery has resolved both these frustrations. Perhaps it’s just conditioning from using Windows for so long, but grouping folders together ahead of files makes more sense to me. Judging by...

Try this quick experiment. Grab a pen and paper and sign your name with your non-dominant hand. How did it feel? Awkward? Slow? Messy? It probably required conscious effort that isn’t needed when using your preferred hand. That’s how I felt for the first six weeks when I switched to a Mac after using Windows for more than twenty years. On more than one occasion I’d wondered if I’d made a big mistake. The frustration of adapting to a new operating system can be reduced by configuring your Mac to work more like Windows. The biggest challenge for me was...

Hitting the Windows key together with one of the arrow keys provided a fast way to resize a window to fit the left or right half of the screen in the Microsoft world. For mouse users, dragging the window to the edge of the screen achieves the same result. This is really useful if you’re writing in one application while referring to research in another. I was pretty disappointed to find that OSX didn’t provide an equivalent capability. After a day or two of manhandling windows into position, I went looking for a better solution. Fortunately, there are numerous third...

If I want to recover a file from the trash, I usually know pretty soon after it’s been deleted. Windows made it easy to sort the Recycle Bin by delete date. You can do this on the Mac too, but it’s not quite as obvious on OSX. Here’s how to sort the Trash with the most recently deleted files at the top. Open the Trash. Select View, Show View Options or press ⌘+J. Select Date Added to display the Date Added column. Click the Date Added column heading in the Trash window to sort in reverse date order. The most...

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